The invention relates to a cutting station for a tire building machine.
WO 2008/123772 A1 discloses a cutting device for cutting strips from a band of material. The cutting device comprises an upper knife and a lower knife, wherein the upper knife can be swiveled upwards to allow for a transfer device in the form of a magnet beam to pass underneath. The magnet beam is arranged to pick up and retain the band of material on a feed conveyor at one side of the knives and for transferring the band of material onto a discharge conveyor at an opposite side of the knives, while crossing a cutting line. The magnet beam subsequently releases the band of material onto the discharge conveyor and moves away, while the upper knife is swiveled back into abutting contact with the lower knife to cut the transferred band of material along the cutting line.
The passing of the transfer device across the cutting line requires that the upper knife moves away sufficiently to avoid contact between the transfer device and the upper knife, thereby rendering the cutting device less compact. Also, the mechanism to move the upper knife away makes the cutting device unnecessarily complex, more costly and subject to more maintenance. Furthermore, the upper knife can only move back into a position for cutting after the transfer device has cleared the cutting line. This costs valuable time in the process of tire manufacturing.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,746,119 A discloses a tire fabric cutting and band building machine. The machine includes a table carried in a vertical position on a main frame. A sheet of fabric passes downwardly from an upper roller along the table to a knife moving diagonally with reference to the table. Although this machine partly solves the problem of the cutting device according to WO 2008/123772 A1, its solution is not satisfactory as the sheet of fabric is unsupported and/or unguided when passing downwardly from the upper roller along the table towards the knife. Hence, the position of the sheet at the knife is unknown and may be inaccurate.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a cutting station for a tire building machine, wherein at least one of the aforementioned drawbacks can at least partially be resolved.